Worth Doing Badly

“Help my unbelief”. This prayer of an anxious father is for patience to let time run its course in waiting for Jesus to fulfil what he promises.

Jesus’ followers were commanded to keep quiet about a miracle until they saw the connection between it and the saving Word which was evident in the restoration of a man’s linguistic capabilities.

We have grown accustomed to this fallen upside-down world so that we do not know what uprightness is or whether we even desire it. Yet, we live with an unbearable suspicion that nothing can turn us upright so we are always falling for the fake solutions of hucksters and hypocrites.

By successfully labelling the Pharisees hypocrites, Jesus exposed their "splendid" theatre of deception. Their public performance of a rigid, methodical observation of religious rules and rituals disguised the "abandoning the commandment of God" taking place in their hearts. They lacked integrity which is the integration of the tongue with the heart and the integration of inner beliefs with public...

Life, like love, is not truly life unless it is forever. Though Peter was profoundly scandalized by Jesus’ incomprehensible command to eat his body and drink his blood, he recognized he had nowhere to go because Jesus spoke the words of eternal life

Here Jesus speaks to those who behold him but do not believe him. They heard Jesus’ words and experienced his miraculous works but did not believe he was the Bread of Life who satisfies the insatiable hunger for evermore life. Their rejection would make sense if they were satisfied. But they were not.

Jesus named himself the bread of life who alone satisfies our human, essential and existential hunger for eternity.

Looking back, the Evangelist Mark could recognize why cowardliness plagued the apostles until they witnessed Jesus’ resurrection. Only at that point they understood that the peace that calmed the storm was intent on calming the cosmos. Mark expresses a happy appreciation for the patient and effective way that Jesus used their repeated failures to increment their trust in the liberating effects of...

To give his disciples the "good time" of leisure, Jesus took them to a deserted place for rest, which almost no one would think of as having a good time. Jesus’ point was to show them/us that leisure-being removed from the excitement in order to be still-is essential to enjoying the goodness of time as a whole.

Mark contrasts Herod’s lack of character with John’s courage and his followers’ character. Their response to John’s murder was not outrage or emotional outburst.

Concealed in the seed’s smallness is the potential for great growth. To drive home the lesson of the mustard seed, Jesus sent out his disciples, not with military force or a bureaucratic plan or a spectacular advertising strategy but materially vulnerable and with the promise that those who trusted their teaching would be generous and hospitable.

Faith perceives the concealed truth that, against all hope, Jesus is both able and willing to make good on his promise to give life.

The Holy Spirit overcomes the lies terror teaches with the deep truths grace reveals when we are most terrified.

Pentecost inaugurates the third act of the Trinity’s presence on earth. The Spirit’s work is to draw us deeper in participation in the life of the Trinity, which is a vast topic slowly considered during Pentecost, the longest season of the church year.

And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, "He is out of his mind." (Mark 3:21) Had Jesus lost His mind? As CS Lewis famously observed that if Jesus was not the Lord while saying the things he said, he’d be either a liar or lunatic.

"...unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God". Pentecost meant that God’s Triune presence on earth was complete and permanent. From now on, our natural desire for wholeness would be satisfied by God’s supernatural presence and promise. Natural birth would only be satisfied by spiritual/baptismal rebirth.

The first truth the Holy Spirit drives home is an analysis of being stuck in sin without an escape. WB Yeats puts it this way: "Now that my ladder’s gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start: in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart". The second truth is that we need not be stuck because Jesus’ Ascension has restored the ladder of our ascent out of this "foul rag and bone shop." The thir...

Jesus refused to save Himself and come down from the cross because the direction of salvation is upward. The Ascension turned His crucifixion, history’s lowest point, into Ground Zero of salvation’s ascent to life eternal.

Love others as Jesus has loved us? That’s a big problem. Jesus is God; we are not. God is perfect; we are not. To love as God loves means being perfect as God is perfect.

The Word of truth and life. In John 15:1-8 Jesus identifies Himself as the True Vine and promises to satisfy our God-given desire for life not to decay but to become more and more fruitful overtime until, one day, we are raised to eternal life.

"The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep". The resurrection of Jesus compelled death to serve His mission to express His immortal love for the world.

Jesus himself stood among them, and said, “Peace to you!” The fact of the Resurrection meant, from now on, that emerging Peace was the real world; fear and despair were temporary conditions moving toward the irrelevance of non-existence.

Jesus’ healed wounds convinced doubting Thomas that God’s cosmic healing was, in fact, underway. God’s kingdom had come, not by obvious force but by the hidden and humble movement of forgiveness: "If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

"Do not be alarmed." The angel told the first witnesses of the greatest material, death-defying act in all history to "calm down". They were not witnesses of a circus; they were seeing the beginning of the second creation. They were alarmed because they had grown accustomed to triumphant death terminating life. Now they would need to calm down in order to become accustomed to the new edifying role...

Jesus’ first disciples experienced Holy Week as the defeat of their faith and hope because it seemed that evil had triumphed over love. St. Mark’s claim is that Jesus’ movement to the cross was never, at any point along the path, a defeat. And yet, faith and hope are needed life often feels like the hopeless movement toward the defeat of love by death.